I don't know that it always leads to illegal forms of discrimination. First, defining the term -- when you're interviewing, you're discriminating. When you ch

I don't know that it always leads to illegal forms of discrimination. First, defining the term -- when you're interviewing, you're discriminating. When you choose one person over another, you're discriminating between those two people. The question is whether or not the form of discrimination is legal, and accurate. Both should be true. Looking at my own team as an example, there's a guy who's a mid-level who got his start from a boot-camp (30s), a 20-something with an advanced degree, an older[0] from (I think) Russia, we had an Iranian recently leave (for a better position -- she loved the job). We're a relatively small shop (about 100 or so) but as someone who's given a lot of these interviews, and probably seen every resume of every candidate who came on to our team, we're pretty consistent. About 10-15% of the people who submit a resume are women, about 10-15% of our team is made up of women. Ethnic race/nationality matches up similarly. A shop our size "can't do more to recruit women" before we "do more to recruit ... human beings" We haven't enough budget to do much more than explain how great it is to be on our team[1], lay out the skillset we're looking for, and hope resumes show up[2]. [0] There's some form of -ism that keeps me from ever speculating on the age of a woman, but she is probably older than me. [1] Yeah, that sounds buzz-wody, and there are lousy parts to any job, but there is so much upside to the work I do, the company (and people) I work for, that it's hard to contain my own enthusiasm for it. And no, we're not actively trying to make the world a better place by "insert thing that couldn't possibly impact the world in any meaningful way". We're just making neat things all day. It works for me -- might not work for everyone, but I include that last bit as part of the enthusiasm. [2] Most of this is through anecdotal observation, not hard data, so I concede in advance that "I'm wrong on the Internet" :)